The city of Denver wants local landlords' help in finding housing for new immigrants.
On Tuesday, the city launched a program gathering information from landlords with property vacancies that rent for less than $2,000 per month. The city's goal is to connect property owners with new immigrants in need of permanent housing.
Jon Ewing, spokesperson for Denver Human Services, said the city has already started hearing from landlords who want to work with the city on the effort.
The program comes as the city continues closing some of its temporary hotel shelters to scale back costs and respond to new immigrant arrival levels, which have been dropping in recent weeks.
Mayor Mike Johnston announced at the end of February that the city planned to close four hotel shelters, a move he argued could save the city some $60 million from an anticipated $180 million in newcomer support expenses. The number of people staying in these shelters reached about 5,200 in mid-January, though currently there are fewer than 2,000 currently being sheltered, according to city data.
"For ongoing housing, we're trying to do more and better at the case navigation that gets people directly from shelter opportunities into housing, or into workforce options for normal travel, and so that continues to be our focus and it's been successful for us over the last five weeks," Johnston said last week at a press conference about shelter closures.
Though demand for temporary shelter has fallen, it still leaves thousands of new Denver residents, mostly from Venezuela, looking for long-term housing in an increasingly unaffordable housing market, where evictions have reached record highs in recent months.
The challenges of securing housing are combined with the fact that many new immigrants lack work authorization that would let them secure a legal employment. At points in the past few months some new immigrants have camped on Denver streets.
In addition to appealing directly to landlords, local nonprofits and community members have been working for months to connect new immigrants with housing.
In addition to appealing directly to landlords, local nonprofits and community members have been working for months to connect new immigrants with housing.
Yoli Casas, executive director of ViVe Wellness, has been on the front lines of this work. She said the city's appeal to landlords will be a big help as housing resources run low.
"We definitely need assistance in finding out what else is out there," Casas said.
Casas said that in the past month three different Denver property owners reached out about turning their Airbnbs into apartments and renting them out at a discount to help new immigrants. Casas said she hopes the city's call to landlords will help open up other housing resources that might otherwise not be available.
"It's been great because that means we're gonna get more inventory to work with, which is what's needed," Casas said.
